In this 250th anniversary year of Beethoven’s birth, Christopher Tignor has created a completely original approach to the theme of “Ode to Joy.” Slowing the theme to a glacial crawl and resetting the tune amidst new harmonies, this vision of joy is one of yearning and nostalgia better suited for these troubled times. Tignor explains “My approach to the work was to take Beethoven’s well-known theme and use it verbatim (without the last, repeated phrases) as the upper melodic voice of a piano part that forms the backbone of my piece, surrounding it with strings, electronics, and percussion. I wanted to utterly reimagine the triumphant exuberance of this theme in a setting that acknowledges the yearning, fragile qualities of joy. The new harmonies and glacial tempo produces a new, yearning study on finding and holding onto joy during these challenging times.”
Christopher Tignor is a composer, violinist, lecturer, and software engineer. His emotionally charged scores and unique focus on live, performance-based electroacoustic practice has won acclaim within both the classical and experimental communities across 9 LPs on the Western Vinyl and New Albion record labels. He creates the live performance software he uses, shared freely. As a composer he has written and recorded work for ensembles including The Knights, A Far Cry string orchestra, and Brooklyn Rider string quartet, performing alongside them at premiere venues including Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. As a string arranger he has worked with Helios, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, John Congleton, This Will Destroy You, Meshell Ndegeocello, and several other artists at the boundaries of popular music.
As a result of his unique performance technique using tuning forks, Christopher is a sponsored artist of the German tuning fork maker Wittner. Likewise, renown software leader Antares sponsors Christopher for his inventive application of Auto-Tune as a “choral” violin harmonizer.
music won't save you 